THE NEW YORKER makes everything not only amorphous but actually sentimental and false The book is extremely hard to read; the sim- ple meaning often escapes one. Van Doren is not romanticizing his people in the manner of Chateaubriand (one often wishes he would) ; he is trying to create a "mythology" out of folklore, and I am reminded that someone has done this before, in America. We have already seen, proceeding from the stu- dious retreat of a poet and urban man of letters, both "Hiawatha" and "Evan- 1 . " ge lne. Yeats came up against the same prob- lems in writing for the Irish theatre. He was faced with the task of treating peasants poetically. He learned-from Synge, who knew the thing instinctively -that tragedy on the level of folk can only be treated as simple people them- sel ves treat it, with a great measure of coarse humor or with a pervading color- ing of the cruellest irony. It was not so much the notion of parricide that shocked the town-bred Irish in "The Playboy" as the typical peasant mixture of awe and hilarity with which Synge's .Li\.ran Islanders took the crime. The sub- tlest metaphysics and philosophy cannot be applied directly to the folklore which has not already become heroic legend. Folk has its own poetry, at the instinc- tive level-the level of proverbs, tall tales, and the ballad. Then again, the reader feels that Van Doren has at- tached some almost religious symbolism to the killing of this pet animal and its consequences, the deepest meaning of which he has not apprised us of, per- haps because he does not fully see into the symhol himself. Yet it is impossible to add religion to a legend. If it were to be put there, the simple people would have done it themselves, and we would ha ve a pet doe (or its killer, or its a veng- er) worshipped in Illinois to this day. The Mayfield Deer" is charmingly il- lustrated with vignettes by Armin Lan- deck, who has caught a stern simplicity of detail which has eluded the author. " S HENANDOAH," by Delmore Schwartz, a play in prose with a running verse comment and publIshed in the Poet of the Month Series of New Directions, is more experimental than Van Doren's poem. Its faults derive from an allied problem, however-the author's failure to see what effects his su b j ect demands, and even a certain blindness toward what his material real- ly is. The comment in verse to one side, we have a really incisive presentation of Jewish family life in 1 914. The cut- glass bowl on the sideboard, the young 105 ::; ..........J' , ,,' ...." ,<'<:'.f .... .,.. .' ,..: "'';'''":- (iu/ # /tumlfjJaI . ../ /"' , .4l1li'.$ - , :; ^'::::<: l^' '.. ,.,/ "Ii;,:' ,,' ,":: ' r ",'.. . ':'S. N , .:. J- .. - t ' :..' '" 413 -\ " .->.".>"\ :" ,," '"" ,,:, ; ------ " .:- #:' ""- t1::r " ..-;, ./f ri ' - ; :-Z: , "." 7 A!i:!::: \\ h ,*. ...., ,,' :"':>'l!' < '. - <",' '^:"fIk' ,;,,'ÿ6 .'<- ' :, . , ,; : ! " ", "'<-- J ,,:t, ø:' :.-, ,"" < >. ,-:- .>o:\.'J>' . , " '",.... f ' "" ";,. . ,;-<:"', ". )i'\ [ q ì ,b ' , " - w ,?!, , ' " . J11. ""'Y :' ':: +<1Ü\,::", ' ' / J J4, ",. :::::k ,: :', ,::,' <<'-y .....-.-.' ; - - ':V-Þ - ":':":" :... .........., .? Only in one tiny spot on earth-the Pinar del Rio District of Cuba-are the special properties of sun, soil and air of such unique character that they are qualified to produce tobacco for the Imported Havana Cigar, the world's finest. Only in Cuba, too, are the natives taught almost from childhood the fine old Spanish method of cigar- making-of meticulously rolling and finishing by hand each cigar for export. Come today to l\1acy's air-conditioned, humid- ity-controlled Havana Humidor, where more than 150 different shapes and sizes of the finest cigars in the world are kept at their peak of perfection. Macy's Men's Store, Street Floor. ----------------------------------- - ----- R. H. MACY & CO., INC., Herald Square, N. Y. C. Please send me free your Imported Havana Cigar catalogue com- plete with illustrations of shapes and sizes. Name Address City State ,--- -------------------------------------- UCUJ ð JJJ , Authorized by the Tobacco Commission of the Government of Cuba to pre- sent New York's finest and largest collection of Imported Havana Cigars.